Huck Out West(23)

I done what all I was hired on to do, pushing their wagons off in the right direction each morning, guiding them and scouting and hunting for them by day, and then helping them set their wagons at night to circle round their livestock. Whilst they was into their nightly religious rollabouts, old Jim yelping away amongst them, I unyoked and scrubbed down their oxes and done the same for Jackson. But it was like some other body was a-doing it all. People asked me questions and I couldn’t think what they was asking.

For the first time ever, I wanted that money Judge Thatcher was holding for me so’s I could buy the girl away from her pap and the Mormons like the reverend and his missus bought Jim. I was mighty grateful to that lady for saving me from them soldier boys, and whenever I passed her wagon I bowed my head and touched my hat brim, but if ever I sneaked towards the back of the girl’s wagon to spy around, I knowed that old lady’s eyes was on me, and could judge what was laying on my mind.

Jim was watching me, too, but like a friend watches a friend, and I reckoned he was a body I could talk to, so one night when we was having our usual gabble under the stars like we always used to done, I asked him if he was ever in love, and he says, “Sho. Mos’ all de time.”

“Did you ever get in trouble?”

“Awluz tried to.” He grinned his grin, then he closed up and shrugged. “But, praise Jesus, not de kiner trouble dat you is in, chile.”

I heard him and I didn’t hear him. I didn’t have no time for it. I had to go see if that white hair ribbon was on the back of her wagon. It still warn’t. I’d begun to s’pose she’d forgot me. And then one night, there it was, pinned to the drop curtain at the back of her covered wagon. It most made me jump. I’d been wandering the circled wagons, thinking about her and practicing what I’d say when I seen her again if ever I did, but I disremembered everything with that ribbon blazing up the night. Her little roped hands poked through the flap like a puppet’s, one finger beckoning. When I drawed nigh, I could hear her pap snoring. She didn’t show herself, but whispered behind the flap that we couldn’t wait till Fort Laramie to run off because her father had learnt about some Mormon traders up ahead who steal babies and buy young girls to use for wicked purposes. “Oh sir, I’m so afraid!”

So was I, but I dasn’t show it. I warn’t generly so desperately needed by somebody, specially a pretty girl, and for certain I ain’t never run off with one. But I was needful, too. My whole distracted rubbage of a life had got some sense to it all of a sudden. If I warn’t the hero she judged I was, then I would have to fashion up such a person out of my own head and set him out to play the part. “Just tell me, miss,” I says in a low growl like I heard men do in saloons, leaning on their elbows, and then my throat snatched up and I had to clear it and start over again, though it warn’t a growl this time, more like a squeak. “Just tell me when you want to go . . .”

“Oh! I love you, sir,” she says with a little gasp. “You’re so brave and good! Everybody has spoke about the famous Pony Express rider and all they’ve spoke is true! I’ve watched you set your horse so masterful and handsome and twirl your lasso and talk so manly to the others. You’re just the sort of western man that I’ve been dreaming of.” Her pale little hands disappeared behind the flap, and when they come out again, they was holding a shiny cloth which she begged me please to take. “It’s the only nice thing I have left in the whole world. I want you to keep it for me.”

It was a pair of silky drawers edged at the knees with lace. I ain’t never held such a thing in my hands before. It was slippery as a live fish and I had to grab on to it with both hands.

“My father won’t let me wear such finery and says he’d use them for greasing the wagon wheels, except they’re my only dowry. When he’s drunk and acting mean, he still might do that, just in spite. I hope you can take care of them for me till we’re far away from here.” The drawers was like oily water and kept sliding through my fingers before I could catch a-holt. I was afraid I might fail her before we even got started. “Now, please, sir, can you help me cut these ropes? There’s some tied round my ankles, too.”

I was able finally to get a grip onto the lacier bits and stuff the drawers deep inside my shirt so as to give me a free hand to fetch out my clasp knife. My fingers was as useless as mule hoofs, though, and I dropped the knife twice before I could reach for her rawhide ropes, and then I dropped it again. “Give it to me,” she says, falling out of patience, and I done so, just as her pap snorted loud in his sleep and shouted out some cusswords. “Oh no!” she gasps. “He’s waking up! RUN!”

I bounded back to my sleeping tent on all fours like a scared rabbit, the drawers oozing out of my shirt and scrapping the ground under me. I crawled in under the tent and laid there, my heart pounding like it was looking for a way out through my breastbone and feeling most putrified with disgrace. I felt like that stupid Huckleberry in Tom Sawyer’s wild west yarns. Why can’t you never do nothing right, Huck? I could hear him say. I slid her drawers under my head and lit up my pipe and sucked on it a while, but I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know if I could ever sleep again. But then all of a sudden I did.

I startled up from a beautiful dream about running off somewheres with a pretty girl. I was ever so happy and feeling lucky for the first time in my life. Then I recollected it warn’t a dream without everything was. “I love you, sir,” she said. It was so strange and unregular I couldn’t take it in when it popped out of her. Now, laying there in the dark with the soft chorus of snores all around, I could hear her clear as if she was laying alongside of me. “I love you.” It sent a shiver down my back and made me set up to catch my breath.